![]() ![]() There's that curious sensation of you the filmgoer being separated from the performer, who is clearly doing the show for a live audience, and that awkward issue of what to do with the camera so the film won't look stagy but won't constantly call attention to itself. The movie captures Sweeney's stage version on celluloid, and like many a film version of a theatrical production, it suffers somewhat in the translation. When the comedian's ongoing dispatches from her life proved enormously popular, she shaped them into a solo stage show that became a hit in San Francisco and propelled her to Broadway. Sweeney would take the stage every Sunday and serve up a monologue/rant/confession that was essentially a recap of the preceding week's medical developments, humiliations at the hands of hospital staffers, and off-center domestic dramas with her family, colored by Sweeney's delightfully wry comic take on the same. Sweeney's show was born as part of The Uncabaret, a weekly showcase of alternative comedy at a club in West Hollywood. ![]() Saturday Night Live alumna Sweeney (It's Pat!) provides a first-person account of the traumatic year during which she was battling cervical cancer even as her brother Mike was wrestling with brain cancer, and the humor and compassion with which she tells their story strokes our funny bone and stirs something warm inside. “The feel-good cervical cancer movie of the year!” That's how I'd sum up this concert film in my “let's mock Joel Siegel” mode, but when all is said and done, the description isn't too far off the mark. ![]()
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